


Unexpected but Accepted

by SapphicScavenger



Category: Book of Life (2014)
Genre: Acceptance, Coming Out, Fluff, LGBTQ Character, Other, Short & Sweet, Transgender, always has been and always will be, etapalli is a trans girl
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-12
Updated: 2019-05-12
Packaged: 2020-03-02 08:09:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18807154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SapphicScavenger/pseuds/SapphicScavenger
Summary: La Muerte has raised many of her and Xibalba's children over the years and thinks nothing can surprise her anymore. She doesn't know how wrong she is.





	Unexpected but Accepted

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Mother's Day everyone! This story is dedicated to all the LGBTQ kids whose mothers don't accept them for who they are. You are worthy of being loved and the universe accepts you as you are. There is nothing wrong with you.
> 
> Tristán and Rahui belong to TheMusicalCC on Tumblr  
> Feliciana, Esteban, Elphaba, and Adeleine belong to Hansuoddie on Tumblr  
> Santos, Valdez, and Dulcea belong to Jackie-Sugarskull on Tumblr  
> Alazne belongs to QueenxIvory on Wattpad  
> Miguel belongs to TheLovelyDeer on Tumblr  
> Lucia belongs to suzubelle-chan on Tumblr  
> Sartana, La Muerte, Xibalba, and Candlemaker belong to Jorge Gutierrez and Sandra Equihua  
> Etapalli belongs to Me.

La Muerte had given birth more times than she could count and had raised all of her children in love and kindness. But the years had made her cocky. She assumed she was an expert at this parenthood thing. She'd dealt with thousands of skinned knees, many first steps, countless first crushes. She'd considered she'd never been wrong when it came to raising her children, until she became pregnant in the winter of 1924. 

La Muerte was convinced that this child would be a girl. Her sister would comment on her figure and tell her all signs pointed to her having a girl, and truthfully she felt the little life squirming inside her was a girl. She was shocked, needless to say, when she gave birth to a boy on October 31st 1924. Shocked, but happy with the birth of her son. She and Xibalba chose the name Etapalli for their son and he was immediately welcomed into the big family. 

He was made of cocoa butter with a tiny red heart in the middle of his forehead and black nose markings like his mother along with purple, teardrop like stains on his chubby cheeks. His face was wreathed with a cloud of black hair that matched the pair of black wings that sprouted from his back and his eyes were green and catlike. In all, everything was perfect and La Muerte began to forget about her strange feelings around her son.

The question came one day when Etapalli was two years old. La Muerte expected the question to be about why the eye colors of the different realm inhabitants changed or some other childish question along the lines of "why is the sky blue" or "why are mortals so dumb". But the question was much stranger than she'd ever heard from one of her children.

"¿Mamí?" 

"¿Si Mijito?"

"Can I have a dress like Tana's?" La Muerte nearly dropped the paperwork she was holding. 

"A dress like Tana's? Why would you want a dress like Tana's?" She asked her son. Etapalli fiddled with his hands. 

"She pretty in it and supa cool!" He gave a big smile. The goddess could tell her son wasn't telling the whole truth but she let it slide. 

"None of your brothers ask for dresses, but I'll ask Tia to make you one if that's what you really want." The toddler's face lit up and he hugged his mother's leg. 

And so Etapalli got a dress like his sister's and the incident was forgotten until a month or two later when La Muerte heard the giggling of young children coming from her room while walking through the hallways. When she opened the door she found her two youngest children sitting on the counter of her vanity with faces caked in makeup. 

"What are you two doing?!" She cried and went to them. The children jumped. "Ay dioses you're filthy. Look at yourselves. You need a bath at once." 

"Noooooo mamí don't give us a bath!" Alazne whined. 

"Don't we look pretty mamí?" Etapalli looked up at his mother. 

"Maybe when you're a little older we can do makeup, bueno? But not today. Now you're getting a bath." She grabbed the two clowns and carried them to the bath. "While I'm at it, both of you need a haircut." The kids whined.

"Mamí I don't want a haircut." Etapalli protested. "I want long hair. Can I have long hair?" 

"Of course, mijo." La Muerte sighed. 

It was nearly a year later when La Muerte, passing through the hallway to her chambers after comforting Lucía from a nightmare, heard soft crying coming from the room where her two youngest slept. She opened the door and found her three year old son curled in a ball crying. "Etapalli?" She went to him and sat next to him. "What's wrong mijo?"

"Mamí I don't want to be your son anymore." He coughed. La Muerte felt her heart break in two. Had she done something to harm her child? Was he not happy? Did he hate her?

"¿Por qué no?" She tried not to let her sadness show. 

"I'm not a boy. I don't want to be anyone's son. I wanna be your daughter." Etapalli sniffled. La Muerte felt everything stop. She thought she'd seen it all, and yet here she was being surprised again. Not once had she been told this by any of her children and she was shocked to be frank. And yet, searching through her mind, she'd seen this many times before in mortals and a few times in minor deities and nymphs. She chastised herself for not catching the signs sooner, as she'd made it very clear to Xibalba when expecting Tana that their children wouldn't be forced into roles they didn't want to take in concerns of expression and didn't think anything more of giving Esteban a princess's tiara or giving Dulcea a toy pirate ship than they were just kids playing with toys. She wondered if she missed this before with any other children.

"Do you? How long have you known?" The diosa asked her child. 

"All long." The child wiped her eyes. 

"So you were never my son. You're my daughter?" She gently rubbed Etapalli's back. The toddler nodded. "I'm sorry, mija. I'm sorry I didn't realize sooner." She picked up her child. "Si. You can be my daughter. You always have been and always will be my daughter. Nothing will ever change that." She kissed her forehead. "Do you want to change your name? We picked it out because it's a boy's name and a girl's name."

"No. Keep it." The toddler said. La Muerte nodded understandingly and hugged her daughter.

The exchange was easy enough to pull off for those outside the family. If people asked, La Muerte and Xibalba would quickly tell them they were mistaken. "We've never had a son named Etapalli. Only a daughter." They'd say adamantly. It took a while for the other children to get the hang of it, but soon they forgot they'd ever had a brother named Etapalli. And still, questions came. 

"Why does your brother wear a dress?" one nahual child asked Tristán when the boy wandered with his younger sisters through the forest in Mayahuel's realm. It only took one punch from the angry, black skinned godling to shut the nahual boy up.  
"Why do you get stuck with all the freak siblings?" One kid had once asked Rahui and Esteban. Esteban had to hold his brother back from ripping the antagonist apart. 

"Why do they all hate me?" Etapalli asked Valdez, her older brother.  
"They don't hate you. They just don't understand and they're scared of what they don't understand." Valdez said, not looking up from his book and putting a bony arm around his sister. 

Etapalli was five years old when she underwent her lifechanging transformation. She was given a potion by The Candlemaker and The Creator to turn her body to female for all time unless she shapeshifted back to male for a disguise. The overnight transformation and recovery was painful for the little girl, who would wake up in the middle of the night crying from the pain. The other children took it upon themselves to keep watch over her during the process and help her to feel less pain. Dulcea brought her churros. Sartana would play her guitar. Feliciana and Elphaba would try to sing her back to sleep. Adeleine and Esteban brought medicinal herbs to reduce the pain. Rahui played his flute for her. Tristan, Valdez, and Miguel would read to her or act out shadow puppet stories. Alazne would hug her sister and cuddle with her to get her to sleep. Even Santos, who preferred to be asleep in the late hours of night, would put aside his sleeping schedule to color with his sister to distract her from the pain. It was a painful three days before Etapalli was able to get back to her full strength.

Soon the children were running around causing just as much trouble as before, but they were all happier. "This is why you listen to maternal instincts." La Muerte told Xibalba.  
"You win this time, my dear." The old god said with a smile on his face, watching his daughter scale one of the trees in the garden, happier than he'd ever seen her. "I'm not complaining."

**Author's Note:**

> So Yeah here's the big reveal. Etapalli is trans. I'm genderfluid and I've been thinking over creating her to be trans for a while now and decided to finally do it. Even though she is Trans she's still gender-non-conforming because she's an anarchist who doesn't follow the rules of others. She can totally rock a tuxedo though.  
> If you're LGBTQ+ and you're feeling alone and feel as though you have nobody, you are a part of a vibrant, spportive, loving community and we accept you as you are. There is nothing wrong with you.


End file.
